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Financially, Lululemon Athletica has gone from strength to strength in the last year. It reported 2011 revenues of $1 billion, up from $712 million the year before, for its trendy $98 yoga pants.
But that success came at a price. In January, founder Chip Wilson stepped aside and his duties were taken over by CEO Christine Day, after he generated a string of unfortunate headlines about his weird beliefs.
Those beliefs include favoring child labor, his disdain for the ability of the Japanese to speak English, a love of Ayn Rand, and his opinion that The Pill created a generation of divorce-shattered women now seeking empowerment through yoga.
Here's how it happened.
The founder is an Ayn Rand fan and the company takes its values from Atlas Shrugged.
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Late last year, the company began printing the phrase "Who is John Galt?" on its shopping bags. Galt, of course, is the star of Rand's "objectivist" novel, "Atlas Shrugged," which argues that the naked pursuit of self-interest should be society's highest ambition. Founder Chip Wilson read the book when he was 18.
Wilson believes the birth control pill and smoking are responsible for high divorce rates—and the existence of Lululemon itself.
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Here's what Wilson says of his company's origins:
"Women’s lives changed immediately [after the pill]. ... Men did not know how to relate to the new female. Thus came the era of divorces.
"With divorce and publicity around equality, women in the 1970′s/80′s found themselves operating as “Power Women.” The media convinced women that they could win at home and be a man’s equal in the business world. Women put in 12 hour work days, attempted to keep a clean and orderly house, and give their children all the love they had pre-divorce. What they gave up however was their social life, exercise, balance, and sleep.
"The 1980′s gave way to Power Women dressing like men in boardroom attire with big shoulder pads. They went to 3 martini lunches and smoked because this is what their “successful” fathers did in the business world.
"Breast cancer also came into prominence in the 1990’s. I suggest this was due to the number of cigarette-smoking Power Women who were on the pill (initial concentrations of hormones in the pill were very high) and taking on the stress previously left to men in the working world.
"Ultimately, Lululemon was formed because female education levels, breast cancer, yoga/athletics and the desire to dress feminine came together all at one time."
Wilson created the name 'Lululemon' because he thinks Japanese people can't say the letter 'L.'
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He told Canada's National Post Business Magazine, "It's funny to watch them try and say it," when asked about his views on the Japanese pronunciation of the company's name.
In 2009, he wrote:
It was thought that a Japanese marketing firm would not try to create a North American sounding brand with the letter “L” because the sound does not exist in Japanese phonetics. By including an “L” in the name it was thought the Japanese consumer would find the name innately North American and authentic.
In essence, the name “lululemon” has no roots and means nothing other than it has 3 “L’s” in it. Nothing more and nothing less.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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